Cheers Gary

While at GenCon this year, I made a donation to the Gygax Memorial Fund, and received a copy of a Cheers, Gary, a book that compiles together various posts Gary made on ENWorld’s forums. Though it really is little more than a reprinting of posts readily found for free online, it is awful nice to have them all put together in a physical volume, and makes for some nice light reading before bed. I’m also glad to have finally donated to this worthy cause, something I should have done ages ago.

I just thought I’d share a few quotes I’ve marked in the book while reading it that spoke to me. There’s not meant to be any implied judgment here on “the right way to play the game”, such is nonsense. Everyone makes D&D their own. However, I can’t deny that I do find it gratifying when I see Gary say something that pretty much gels directly with how I play now.

On with the quotes:

…the more rules one must pay close attention to, the more difficult it is to create adventure material

Fact is, I have a lot of fun just playing and “winging it.” If the players arent’ lost in known rules they tend to have more fun that way, and the sense of wonder comes back…

I have nothing against the use of miniatures, but they are generally impractical for long and free-wheeling campaign play where the scene and opponents can vary wildly in the course of but an hour.

Disputing which game or variation thereof is superior is much the same as arguing about what food tastes best or what color is the most pleasing, is it not?

I’m only about half way through the book, so I’ll likely have more little gems to share as I go.

1 Comment

Somewhere on my blog I also quoted that comment about miniatures usage, from when it first appeared at ENWorld. So true: It’s kind of hard to see how different and free-flowing early D&D was, if you’re blinded by all-prepared set-pieces in conjunction with minis.